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sfcrazy writes "A very serious argument erupted on the Linux kernel mailing list when Andy Grover, a Red Hat SCSI target engineer, requested that Nicholas A. Bellinger, the Linux SCSI target maintainer, provide proof of non-infringement of the GPL. Nick is developer at Rising Tide Systems, a Red Hat competitor, and a maker of advanced SCSI storage systems. Nick's company recently produced a groundbreaking technology involving advanced SCSI commands which will give Rising Tide Systems a lead in producing SCSI storage systems. Now, RTS is blocking Red Hat from getting access to that code as it's proprietary. What's uncertain is whether RTS' code is covered by GPL or not — if it is then Red Hat has all the rights to get access to it and it's a serious GPL violation."

In fact, we are not violating GPL. In short, this is because we wrotethe code you are referring to (the SCSI target core in our commercialRTS OS product), we have exclusive copyright ownership of it, and thiscode contains no GPL code from the community. GPL obligations onlyapply downstream to licensees, and not to the author of the code. Thosewho use the code under GPL are subject to its conditions; we are not.

As you know, we contributed the Linux SCSI target core, including therelevant interfaces, to the Linux kernel. To be clear, we wrote thatcode entirely ourselves, so we have the right to use it as we please.The version we use in RTS OS is a different, proprietary version, whichwe also wrote ourselves. However, the fact that we contributed aversion of the code to the Linux kernel does not require us to provideour proprietary version to anyone.

If you want to understand better how dual licensing works, perhaps wecan talk off list. But we don’t really have a responsibility to respondto untrue accusations, nor to explain GPL, nor discuss our proprietarycode.

We’re very disappointed that Red Hat would not be more professional inits communications about licensing compliance matters, particularly to acompany like ours that has been a major contributor to Linux andtherefore also to Red Hat’s own products. So, while I invite you totalk about this with us directly, I also advise you – respectfully – notto make public accusations that are not true. That is harmful to ourreputation – and candidly, it doesn’t reflect well on you or yourcompany."so basically if they developed the code and use a closed source OS that is not linux then redhat don't have a leg to stand on...

if they use a module inserted into linux then it will "taint" the OS then it gets shifty...

This scenario would be a GPL infringement. This is probably what Red Hat suspects. This is contrary to RTS' claim, which is: The RTS OS codebase is clean, and is not a derivative product of the GPLed Linux codebase (with other contributions).

But I agree... the burden is on Red Hat to prove it. Demanding a code audit of a proprietary software codebase just because you suspect non-compliant backporting doesn't sound like it would work. In the meanwhile, they've poisoned relationships with a major code contributor. I hope it was worth it.

RTS could make Red Hat happy by running a Black Duck analysis on their proprietary code and sharing the result.

That would likely not be reliable, since the wrote the original and forked it into the kernel, and developed the original further into their own product. The analysis would certainly contain many false positives since the kernel source came from proprietary source.

Besides, its only the back-flow of contributed changes that would make the GPL apply to their original code, and perhaps not even thatwould be sufficient. Does a contributed two line patch drag the entire original proprietary source into the GPL?

Besides, its only the back-flow of contributed changes that would make the GPL apply to their original code, and perhaps not even thatwould be sufficient. Does a contributed two line patch drag the entire original proprietary source into the GPL?

Not quite - if the proprietary module links into the Linux subsystems, as seems extremely likely, then the whole module likely becomes a derivative work, the exact details become very important in that case. The nVidia drivers walk this line, which is why you don't see them integrated into with any Linux distro - doing so would tilt the balance towards the derivative work interpretation and is likely to elicit a cease-and-desist letter.

Blackduck can only confirm that the code in question doesn't copy directly from code in it's look-up database. It can't determine whether a given bit of modified code is a derivative work under copyright law and hence a possible GPL violation (where GPL code is involved).

That is oversimplifying it too much. It does also state that if you make changes and distribute to anyone as binary or otherwise, you have to make those changes available to any third party, not just the recipient of the binaries, as per:

b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three
years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your
cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete
machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be
distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,

"As you know, we contributed the Linux SCSI target core, including the relevant interfaces, to the Linux kernel. To be clear, we wrote that code entirely ourselves, so we have the right to use it as we please."

If I modify your GPL'd code, I need to release my changes. If I releasing my own code under the GPL, I can also release it however else (ie, closed and proprietary) I want, and you can't do a goddamned thing about it. You have no rights to my further improvements thereof, you have no rights to me continuing that codebase in the future, you simply have no rights beyond what I've granted you with the GPL version.

More to the point - The GPL doesn't change the ownership of a snippet of code. It only changes the terms under which others can use that code. The original author still retains the right to do whatever the hell he wants with his code.

WTF? I see this all the time. Just because is it your friend who breaks the law, doesn't mean you shouldn't turn him in. Yes, you sour the relationship, but turning a blind eye is only going to encourage him the break the law even more.

No, this is more like you see a brand new BMW in your friend's driveway and you call the cops because you're pretty sure he can't afford that, it must be stolen.

Some laws are worth less than friend, even shady friends...
ex: Let's assume that a friend confess to me that he raped a girl last weekend, I would denounce him without a hint of hesitation. Now imagine that he confessed that last weekend he was snorting cocaine on some prostitutes ass; I would not call the cops, would you ?

no, possession without a prescription is illegal. Distribution without a valid licence to do so is illegal. Consumption is not illegal (if it were, then you wouldn't be able to take it even if you were legally in possession of it).

so basically if they developed the code and use a closed source OS that is not linux then redhat don't have a leg to stand on..

The OS they use is irrelevant. You can very well have closed-source, proprietary software (or even drivers) that run under Linux. That the Linux source falls under the GPL doesn't mean your software has to be GPL, too.

You only need to release your code under the GPL if you use other software that is GPL licensed (and to which you do not own copyright yourself).

They use Linux, there is no proprietary OS. From their own description:

RTS OS is a single-node integrated storage operating system based on Linux and the standard Linux Unified Target, developed by RisingTide Systems (RTS), including support for iSCSI, Fibre Channel, FCoE, InfiniBand, SMB2 and NFS3/4.

I'll get hate for saying this but NOW does everyone see why words like "viral" get applied to the GPL? Here they gave code they wrote to the Linux SCSI team which they used. They can take that same code and make a proprietary version all they want because THEY WROTE IT yet the are being accused of violating the GPL because they have a proprietary version of their own code?

It is THEIRS, they wrote it, they can do what they will and license it any damned way they want! The only thing they CAN'T DO is take the

Unless it can be seen in the binary, RTS will tell anyone involved: 'No, you cannot see our source. You've made a serious public accusation. Do you own your house? Any other assets? What was your net worth prior to today?'

Two things apply in that case:1 someone with standing would have to take action. This is normally the copyright holder.2 the included code would have to be either licensed or removed. There is no obligation for rising tide to provide their source code.

Licensing could, of course, be done under a different license than the GPL, as the copyright holder may unilaterally license their code at will.

Even if some code were included, any damages would take into account the proportion of the infringing code to non infringing code. Unless they were egregious, thus wouldn't be terribly much.There really isn't anything to see here except dirty laundry.

In an earlier post he indicated that they forked the code into the kernal, such that the fork they use in RTS is and has always been their own code, and they maintain the open fork separately of that. From his wording, it sounded like the fork that went into the kernal has never been brought back into RTS. As noted by a later poster, these accusations, as well as any proof that the accusations are wrong, would be very difficult to prove either way. I'm not really sure what outcome Red Hat is expecting.

Acting independently in a legal matter - which this clearly is - get you in a world of hurt very, very quickly. You see, a person acting on their own when they have a connection with a company as an employee or even outside contractor gets you the status as an "agent" acting on behalf of the company. It doesn't even matter if you are an unauthorized agent, everything you do that can be attributed to being an agent of the company suddenly is the responsibility of the company.

This is a no lose political play by RedHat; they never expected there was a real licensing violation. Consider the two outcomes here:

-Rising Tide Systems says that it developed their EXTENDED_COPY and COMPARE_AND_WRITE commands under a different license, walled off from the main code they contributed to the kernel under the GPL. (That's what they've done now). Then RedHat's sales position is that people who buy Rising Tide's Linux are getting a licensed closed-source product. It is guaranteed not to integrate smoothly with the *real* Linux kernel because of the architecture needed to keep it licensed differently, it's not getting community review for features and security issues, and if Rising Tide goes out of business their customers are screwed--good old fashioned vendor lock-in.

-Rising Tide rolls over and releases their code into the mainline kernel. Now RedHat benefits from it being available too.

RedHat makes much of its money from companies that are moving to open-source because they are sick of the downsides of commercial software, which go from quality issues to vendor lock-in. They're compelling Rising Tide to either give away somethings they're trying to keep closed, or to shame themselves by admitting they're not really an open-source team player. RedHat can launch that sort of acusation safely because they are operating very transparently. We know that companies are not locked in to RedHat from how many clones of it exist. When CentOS and Scientific Linux work, clearly RedHat is sharing all the important parts. And if you've made that part of your competing position, preaching down to people who are not sharing as being sellers of inferior products is very easy to do.

I think the more interesting concern isn't so much RH v. RTS, it's what happened to SCST not long ago. Vladislav Bolkhovitin has a nice, solid option in SCST (http://scst.sourceforge.net/index.html) that was skipped over in the upstream kernel in favor of the LIO stuff from Rising Tide Systems. We moved away from SCST to LIO at work even though we didn't think it was quite as good simply because being embraced by the community usually means that you win long term. Andy basically makes this point:

RTS (the accused) engineer and lawyer have asserted they are not violating the GPL, but things they've said to justify that don't hold up to scrutiny, and at least imply license violation. They may well be correct, but they're completely failing to explain their position and answer questions.

If you read the list, it is clear that no one is disputing the facts of what happened

Actually, the Red Hat guy supposes some of the GPL code made it's way into RTS:

"Second, you claim you hold exclusive copyright for the code. Not true. One example: on http://www.risingtidesystems.com/storage.html [risingtidesystems.com] you claim support for FCoE. You didn't build tcm_fc, Intel did. Under the GPLv2. Furthermore, SRP support came from SCST, iirc. None of these contributors gave RTS any right to use their copyrighted code except under the conditions of the GPLv2."

Seems like RTS customers are the ones who would have a right to demand the source to whatever GPLed software they bought or been given. And any of them could legally "leak" to Grover. Not sure how RTS currently has any obligations to Grover, though. Why would they?

Remember that GPL is about protecting users. As handy as it usually is for developers, that's incidental; it's not for developers.

Seems like RTS customers are the ones who would have a right to demand the source to whatever GPLed software they bought or been given. And any of them could legally "leak" to Grover. Not sure how RTS currently has any obligations to Grover, though. Why would they?

Presumably because Grover as the Red Hat SCSI target maintainer (or, more likely, Red Hat as his employer) contributed, under the GPL, code (patches, etc.) to the piece of Linux he accuses RTS of infringing, thus what Grover is doing is accusing RTS of infringing the copyright on his (or Red Hat's) code by not complying with the GPL with regard to that code.

Remember that GPL is about protecting users. As handy as it usually is for developers, that's incidental; it's not for developers.

The GPL, like all copyright licenses written or chosen by the licensor with a take-it-or-leave-it choice for the licensee is used by copyright owners to protect the interests of the copyright owner; its not a contract, so users don't even have the arguable enforcement rights they might have as intended third-party beneficiaries of a contract.
Now, it may be that the FSF, as the original authors and users (as licensors) of the GPL had, as their interests in mind for it to protect, what they perceived to be the general public interest or the interests of end-users. But it would be a mistake to forget that its for copyright owners, first, last, and only.

legally, "must" is freely interchangeable with "may". There is the choice of not complying with this clause. This does not complicate matters, as it is perfectly legitimate to discard portions of an adhesion.

"If the term was outside of the reasonable expectations of the person who did not write the contract, and if the parties were contracting on an unequal basis, then it will not be enforceable." Patterson, 1919.

I've been advising Rising Tide Systems (RTS) in this matter. Please let me reassure you that RTS is acting on advice of counsel.

RTS (and specifically Nicholas Bellinger) wrote the scsi target code and owns its copyright. We registered that copyright at the Library of Congress. RTS contributed a version of the scsi target to Linux for distribution under the GPL. On behalf of Marc Fleischmann, CEO of RTS, I can reassure you that RTS remains committed to the Linux project and will continue to contribute to it. We are pleased that RTS software is a part of the Linux distribution under the GPL.

RTS also has a commercial software business. It distributes versions of its scsi target code that support features and functions not officially in Linux (or at least, not yet). That commercial RTS business includes the licensing of those derivative works of its own code to its own customers. Nothing whatsoever in the GPL or in the policies of the Linux Foundation prohibits that.

I would also like to address some comments made on these lists by Andy Grover and Bradley Kuhn.

First, I hope that we can tone down the arguments about whether the use of Linux APIs and headers automatically turns a program into a derivative workof Linux. I think that argument has been largely debunked in the U.S. in the recent decision in Oracle v. Google, and in Europe in SAS v. WorldProgramming. Does anyone here question whether the original work that RTS contributed to Linux (and that *is* under the GPL) is an original work ofauthorship of RTS despite the fact that it links to other GPL code using headers and APIs?

Second, we are grateful for the efforts that Bradley Kuhn and others put in to enforce the GPL. As I said above, RTS owns and has registered thecopyright on its scsi target and will enforce it if necessary. So Brad, we may solicit your assistance if we find any third party who is distributingan unauthorized non-GPL derivative work of the scsi target now in Linux. RTS, of course, retains the exclusive right to do so, but no third party cando so without a license from RTS.

Best regards,/Larry

P.S. In accordance with my obligations as an attorney when communicating with a represented person, I am copying attorneys for Red Hat and Linux Foundation on this email. If anyone wishes to respond to me, please copy me directly since I am not subscribed to these lists.

I'm afraid that seems pretty clear cut.No developer in their right mind would claim that including APIs induces a derived work (LOL Oracle).It's actually a shame that this took place in public. Whichever way it goes someone looks bad.There could be defamation or libel claims.

First off this is nothing like the Oracle case. That was a case about reimplementing APIs, and has nothing to do with linking against someone-else's code that provides APIs. Secondly, it is a stretch to say that the RTS SCSI target is just including APIs. It is using all sorts of internal kernel functions that go far beyond what most reasonable programmers would consider to be an API to the kernel. If you interpret things that liberally, then any proprietary modifications to a GPL application would be allowed by just bundling up the list of functions you happen to use and calling it an API.

I didn't bring up Oracle vs Google, Larry did. Apparently there was argument that including header files and using the Linux APIs automatically makes software a derivative.This position is absurd. If that's the whole argument then it's clear cut.That's my only point.

I know quite a lot about the Oracle vs Google case, and I agree this is quite different.However, it's not the specifics of the case that are important: it's the HOLDINGs.

First off this is nothing like the Oracle case. That was a case about reimplementing APIs, and has nothing to do with linking against someone-else's code that provides APIs.

Actually, the Oracle case is pretty relevant. Oracle's argument was that the API itself of java - the structure, sequence and organization of it - was copyrightable, not just the code that implemented the API. Google clean room re-implemented the code that made up the API, but kept much of the structure of the API itself. The court decided that the API wasn't copyrightable, a good decision. Ergo, anything that merely USES an API cannot be a derivative work of the code that implements the API, as the API itself isn't copyrightable - if that wasn't the case, that would open up a really huge can of worms. In effect, the API becomes a firewall between two differently licenced bits of code. Which is of course what nvidia use for their binary blobs, for example.

Anyway, even if we assume the scsi target code in question static links to code beyond the API and does thus become a derivative work, then the upshot would be the code in the kernel... would have to be under the GPL v2. Which it already is. So it's rather a moot point.

As long as the code in RTS' private repository has no back-ported GPL code from the kernel, i.e. they haven't imported 3rd party written GPL covered patches intotheir own private code, then they can dual licence their private version however they like. Putting a version of their scsi target software into the kernel under the GPL makes no impact whatsoever on their copyright of said code, even if it is subsequently modified in the GPL kernel version by others. They can't of course fork the GPL version with others contributions and take it private without every contributors permission; but that's not what they're doing by the sounds of it.

As long as the code-flow was one-way - i.e. private to GPL, not two-way including GPL into private, they can write performance improvements to their commercially licenced one all day long and not port them to the GPL version in the kernel as much as they like.

And so what, anyway? Linux gets a decent SCSI target (I've used it a few times in production; it does what it says on the tin) it wouldn't otherwise have; and RTS have a commercial product for those wanting a higher performance product for high-end usage, thus allowing them to actually stay in business. Most code in the kernel, and the gnu/linux platform comes from individuals working for or sponsored by companies; those companies make money by various means, and that's what pays for the coders. Hobbyist coders do produce quite a bit of course, but linux wouldn't be where it is without commercial support.

And I've just realised why the API argument is important. If using the API makes code a derivative work, then the commercial version of the SCSI target module using the GPL kernel APIs would also have be GPL licenced. But given the Oracle-google case, that seems a hell of a reach, and certainly APIs were not considered to create derivative works before anyway - that's rather the point of an API, to allow two pieces of code to communicate without getting up in each other's business...

1. Derivative is a legal term defined by copyright law.2. The 10 lines in question were the only lines aside from API definitions. It's the API portion that is important here, and formed the holdings in the case.

It has never made any sense to me the claim that a piece of code is considered a derivative if the Linux kernel if is uses the API and forms a module. I think Oracle vs Google weakens this claim.

It's the most interesting part of this whole affair by far, since they are, essentially, arguing that linking with GPL'd code does not make your own code GPL'd, even if you redistribute the result as a single work. If this can, indeed, be successfully argued in court, this would significantly change the nature of GPL - in effect, making it more like LGPL if not weaker (if static linking is fine also).

Yes, but they are effectively challenging the former here, as well. There is no other way they can claim to have kernel-mode non-GPL'd code here, at least without some kind of shim (though even that was historically treated with skepticism).

He's talking about header files. The GPL is a license - it lets you do things that you couldn't otherwise do. Copying header files is something you can do with or without a license, as they define an interface, and tend to be trivial. Both of these are grounds for fair use.

- Oracle v. Google was about whether using an API makes a work derivative of the API, creating a copyright violation if the API is copyrighted and the user did not have a license. The answer was a big "NO!"

- GPL is about using copyright to force derivative works of GPLed code to also remain open, by only licensing them on terms that include propagating the license. (The point is to prevent a pathology of releasin

The issue here is not merely "using an API". It's about making a single constituent work (the kernel) consisting of GPL'd and non-GPL'd parts that are clearly written to work together, and redistributing that. The direct analogy in userspace would be statically linking to a GPL'd library, and redistributing the resulting binary - RTS seems to be claiming that they only need to distribute the originally GPL'd parts in that case, while the conventional interpretation has always been that the result is a singl

"You ship Linux as part of RTS OS. Even if you had not asked for LIO to be included in mainline, this would still be true and would require you to publish your changes under the GPLv2."(http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=135240979330272&w=2)

"Is your code an independent and separate work from the Linux kernel? Some tests might be: can it be used without the Linux kernel? Can it be used with alternative kernels? Even if the answer to these questions is YES (which it isn't) then that second quoted sentence would still put your code under the terms of the GPL, since RTS OS distributes its changes along with the Linux kernel."(http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=135250402701805&w=2)

"RTS OS is based on a stock Linux enterprise kernel. This Linux kernel has naturally the ability to load either one of our standalone self-contained target module versions without any modifications."(http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=135242690804322&w=2)

"To be clear, we wrote that code entirely ourselves, so we have the right to use it as we please. The version we use in RTS OS is a different, proprietary version, which we also wrote ourselves. "(http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=135240512628253&w=2)

So, to sum it up: it looks like they distribute the Linux kernel, bundled with a bunch of dynamically loadable proprietary modules of their own authorship. They claim that said bundling does not produce a derived work, because the modules are not physically part of the kernel, and they can load into any Linux kernel, not just this particular one (i.e. they're written against an interface). This is exactly equivalent to claiming that it's okay to use a GPL'd library so long as you dynamically link to it, something that FSF has long claimed is a no-no. Similarly, kernel developers have also claimed that making a module dynamic rather than compiling it directly into the kernel does not change its status as a derived work. It is this claim which is being disputed here, and if it is successfully defended, then it makes GPL effectively identical to LGPL in practice.

From what I understand, the aforementioned proprietary code that they have is distributed as part of their own Linux distro. In other words, it's shipped together with a (GPL'd) Linux kernel, with which it is explicitly designed to work. It's that part of it that is an issue, not the fact that they have also submitted some of their code to mainline kernel.

and be replaced by the BSD license. What RH is doing is sickening and as another pointed out, very much SCO like. And lets not pretend that there is no software released under the BSD or similar license either (see PostgreSQL for one). While I loved Slackware for over a decade, one of the reasons I switched to FreeBSD was the GPL (and the legions of Stallman). It will be a very happy day when FreeBSD is rid of the last of remains of GPL.

If you don't comply with the GPL, than at most, you are violating copyright law.Following the GPL is optional. It grants you certain rights if you follow it.You might have those rights anyway, or you might decide it's better to pay the fines for copyright violation, but I don't see how you can be forced to follow the GPL.

Red Hat hires a software development consultant who is not competing with RTS to examine the code (probably a respected academic). After signing an NDA with RTS, they give him access to the source control archive. He pokes around in the commit history and writes his report. If there *is* infringement, it'll show up and RTS pays the consultant's fee and desists from using the GPL'd code. If there is no evidence of infringement, Red Hat pays the consultant's fee and issues an apology.

Note that I said this *should* be easy to resolve. If RTS is deliberately infringing the GPL, they won't go along with this reasonable suggestion. If Red Hat is just trying to stick a thumb in a competitor's eye while scoring some trade secrets, they wouldn't agree with the suggestion. Both conditions might apply at the same time.

There already is evidence of infringement they cite code that intel contributed and shows up in their proprietary version of the module. If you're developing a competing proprietary module you shouldn't be the kernel maintainer anyway. This guy has the power to refuse patches to the open sourced version to make his company's version remain better. The fact there is a conflict of interest there shows he shouldn't be in that position regardless of the fact that he's probably the best guy for the job.

That would be correct if and only if the vendor is providing the source code along with the device. If they aren't, then GPL v2 section 3b [gnu.org] applies:

Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange; or,

Emphasis mine. It doesn't say just customers. It doesn't say just people who have the binaries. It says "any third party". That means any third party, no further restrictions or conditions. The GPL v3 would let you limit your obligation to provide source to only those who have the binaries, but the Linux kernel is under GPL v2 without the clause allowing use of later versions.

Oh that is interesting, the emphasizis, that is. Perhaps licences should be written in a way that they emphasize such important stuff.For some reason I have difficulties to note such minor but important words.

Emphasis mine. It doesn't say just customers. It doesn't say just people who have the binaries. It says "any third party". That means any third party, no further restrictions or conditions.

I think your interpretation is wrong. If company A makes a special binary for company B along with an offer for source code, then random company C can't come and demand the source code for company B's version. The FSF FAQ says:

(...) When users non-commercially redistribute the binaries they received from you, they must pass along a copy of this written offer. (...) The reason we require the offer to be valid for any third party is so that people who receive the binaries indirectly in that way can order the source code from you.

That is to say, if you have an offer they must honor it no matter who you are. If you don't have an offer, you get nothing. It's like a cashier's check, whoever holds it can cash it. But no check, no money.

I and an employer put a ton of code out under GPL. We had an arrangement, like TrollTech and MySQL, that contributors could only get their contributions into our trunk if they gave us copyright. (Otherwise, the licencing terms clearly stated, they could strip off our licensing terms, fork, and put out a derivative strictly under GPL that we wouldn't touch.) This was plainly stated, contributors agreed to it, and most certainly, all of our code and that of our contributors has always been made available under GPL in addition to our ownership of the original copyright. It was even clearly stated on our wiki and in our source files how this works and that we might license the code commercially. One day, some dude comes along and contributes like a single line of code. Unless he was blind, he read the licensing and contribution terms. Then years later he "discovers" that that very same employer put out a commercial product based on this code that we had original copyright for. As if a company that developed a bunch of IP wasn't going to use it in their products? But he claims they're violating the GPL, makes a big stink about it, and then he brings up again a few more years later, and someone on one of the tech news sites picks it up, and it gets worse from there.

I'm a huge fan of the GPL, but I'm sick of these dipwads who can't distinguish between a version licensed under GPL and the original work that's derived from. Meanwhile, they brainwash a bunch of other losers into thinking we're doing something wrong, while the whole time, we've worked carefully to ensure that we've been 100% precise and explicit and open about our intentions and careful attention to the terms of the GPL. (And BTW, I'm married to a lawyer, so I have extra help being ultra-precise about the GPL and copyright law.) To those people, the GPL is a religion, and anything not under GPL is evil. Moreover, anything related to a GPL'd work MUST be a derivative of the GPL'd work (not the other way around), because no commercial company is ever capable of producing anything that good, and when they release works under GPL, they must have hidden motives.

In our case, the only reason we bothered to retain original copyright was because we were making open source HARDWARE and hoped to be able to fund development by commercially licensing our IP, which we did, which was the main reason we were able to build real hardware in the first place, which everyone knew we were going to have to do, which is why we added those licensing terms in the first place. Hardware is expensive to manufacture. Because of this (and plenty of other contributors and some donations), we were successful at producing 100% open source hardware.

Sometimes, I feel like some of these people actually know they're being idiots. They're trolling, and they're doing it in an intentional attempt to derail an open source project. Like they're bribed by Microsoft, there to stir up trouble for FOSS projects by making political waves. But someone will come along and point out that if you have to choose between malice and stupidity, stupidity is the more probable option.

Personally, my motivation is to make things that work and contribute to the global mindshare. It's not so much source code that I want to share. Source code is only one form of expression. It's KNOWLEDGE that I want to share. And I enjoy creating new knowledge. Now, we always have to consider the ethical consequences of what we do in science. We do science to improve the world, so if there's some way we might harm it instead, we have to find alternatives. But I'm tired of these jerks whose sole purpose in life seems to be to confuse people and make life all-around more difficult for everyone. This is just as bad as people who try to legislate creationism into the science class. (But you know what, they do this because they're jobless losers with too much time on their hands; the rest of us actually have useful work to do.)

I agree somewhat. I believe many things are patented which shouldn't be, because usually they are violated not by someone copying an inovation, but by someone putting the obvious puzzle pieces together. On the other hand, I don't think we should easily dismiss something so successful on the basis of it being obvious. I think there's something to be said about putting a polish on something, offering it on a fairly open hardware platform(while Windows is not open, you are not walled into one single hardwar

Actually the Perq workstation used paging back in 1978. Brian Rosen, the original designer, had a falling out with the folks at Xerox PARQ over paging vs. . And VM was originally used in mainframes in the 1960s. The same is true of preemptive multitasking, and a lot of other stuff - the real guts of OS. If software had been patentable back then, a lot of important stuff would have been kept proprietary for two decades and we'd still be using an abacus to do arithmetic. Which is why software patents, whether pragmatic or not, are ultimately unfair - stuff I did back in the late 1970s and early 1980s were a lot more interesting and difficult than one-click ordering and rounded corners. So for that reason alone, the change in 1986 to allow software patents was a violation of all that's good, right and holy. Imagine if Tim Berners-Lee had patented the World Wide Web? (which was inspired in large part by the NeXT computer's user environment and NeXTMail - much of which could also have been patented under present rules.)

The present situation is akin to the inventor of the internal combustion engine not being granted patents, but painting the side of the car blue being patentable. But I know, I rant off-topic.

I do, however, have a predates-Amiga candidate: OS/9 for 6809. From 1979. The Amiga was 1985.

OS/9 6809 [wikipedia.org] was spectacular for its day. For a 1 mhz system to run a whole bunch of terminals (which could just as easily be other computers... I used SS50 systems with graphics cards and keyboards attached to a parallel port on the CPU card), each client with access to the OS/9 machine's various I/O and other facilities... and using almost no memory... just awesome. Had a really decent scheduler, too -- guaranteed even the lowest priority process would get at least a little time.

The earliest example of a protected memory model using separated memory paging I can think of is OS/2 (1987).

If by "separated memory paging" you mean "paging in separate per-process address spaces", the earliest example I can think of is the Berkeley Timesharing System on the SDS 940 (1966 or so), followed by Multics (1969), TSS/360 (1967 or so), and TENEX (1968-1970 or so).

(Given that you mention UNIX in 1969, you're not restricting this to OSes running on IBM-compatible PCs.)

Actually I remember when win 95 came out and I thought they had finally caught up with the Amiga, then I saw it at RadioShack and realized they still weren't quite there. Once the Pentium 2 came out and there was finally enough horsepower that Windows was finally faster than my Motorola 68060 50mhz A3000. About 3 years later I bought a Dual P2 333mhz Intel Server with 7 4.3GB SCSI drives and installed Linux. The OS was still powerful but the Amiga hardware was too far behind by then. I've never used Win

For that matter, I think I remember that MSWindows was derived from VMS, but with the security and multi-taksing deleted because "personal computers don't need that". But it could have been NT rather than MSWind.

The main architect of NT was Dave Cutler, who was, as far as I know, also the main architect of VMS, so there are similarities in the innards (same "16 time-sharing priorities, 16 real-time priorities" scheduling model and similar I/O subsystem, for example). However, the multi-tasking was definitely not deleted from NT, nor was the security (in the sense of having user IDs and process credentials and ACLs on files, at least in NTFS, and on other objects).

It's basically a risk for any non-completely-free licence, including explicitly non-paid-for ones.

You can be put in exactly the same position by being accused by a commercial vendor of using their code.And the solution for the vendor is the same - sue for copyright infringement, and it'll come out if the code is infringing or not.

You end up with a suspicious competitor that runs around demanding to see your proprietary code, and you end up in court eventually defending yourself.

Cause there's nothing worse than people being concerned that you're violating their copyright and not complying with the license terms. They should just switch to a license that allows them to be taken advantage of with no recourse whatsoever.

Red Hat contributes heavily to Linux, but they use tons of code which have been written by people who haven't been paid by them & they make money off it. But they don't want Oracle to make money off code Red Hat wrote. So they make it difficult for Oracle. What if the millions of people who wrote free Linux code had made it difficult for Red Hat in the first place.